The processing of transaction data separate from payment data is known in the art. Transaction data is received from a merchant by a transaction consolidator on records or in an electronic format, and is then processed to generate transaction data for credit card issuers, issuing banks, and other insitutions. The credit card issuers, issuing banks, and other institutions then process the transaction data internally to generate payment data, so as to authorize any payment requests contained in the transaction data. If problems are detected by the credit card issuers, issuing banks, or other institutions, then the payment data can be transmitted to the transaction consolidator. The transaction consolidator must then interface with the merchant to resolve the problem. If no problems are detected, then the merchants receive payment.
The processing of transaction data and payment data has already been automated, which has resulted in many unforeseen advantages. Nevertheless, problems are still encountered with the processing of transaction data and payment data that have not been solved by the automation of transaction data processing and payment data processing. Merchant equipment or personnel can cause the incorrect entry of data in a manner that is not detected at the time of sale. Fraud can also be committed. When such problems are detected by the user, the user may contact the issuing bank, credit card company, or other payment system to dispute the charge, ask for additional information, or take other suitable actions. The dispute is then relayed to the merchant, which must be notified in a timely manner of the problem and which must readily identify all of the relevant data to resolve the problem.
Because of the large quantity of data generated by the processing of transaction data and payment data, such problems have been resolved in the past by manual searching and processing of the transaction data and the payment data. This has been required in part because the transaction data and payment data has not been available in a single record. Data storage requirements for such “single record” data have exceeded readily available data storage requirements in the past. In addition, transaction data and payment data are generated at different times and by different entitites, and the payment data may be updated repeatedly during payment processing. As a result, “single record” processing of transaction data and payment data has not been available for numerous reasons.